As an already working platform, the audit was conducted after numerous discovery meetings and using feedback from existing users to uncover pain points. The audit was conducted with the platform's principles and established design standards/guidelines in mind, which helped to surface usability and heuristic issues.
The audit produced a number of suggestions which the Salus Team could prioritize and integrate into the platform, most notably:
Key issues identified in this area were that the initial invite email was not being received and that returning users were unable to sync their existing account.
One challenge was that users often changed teams within hospitals, which means they would need to re-onboard with the new team, but sync their existing account. Three recommendations were made to add clarity to this process:
Users were experiencing a high cost error right from the start of their interaction with the platform by not receiving the invitation in the first place (ex. goes to spam, not sent, link is automatically removed). A few options were available to ensure more consistent delivery of platform invites:
Messaging was available in numerous places throughout the platform without context signifiers to provide information on message urgency or source. There was no separation between general unit messaging, news, and alerts. Many of the messages were acquired passively, which meant that users were not seeing important information unless they chose to seek it out.
The first update was to separate communications into message types.
The next update was to show the different message types in the appropriate areas of the platform according to user mental models, to increase user interaction and visibility.
The final update was an update to the Message Creation UI. A few UI updates to the current message creation UI made it easier to determine what type of message is being sent, where it will be displayed, among other options for customizing message creation. This helped unite all communications into a single touchpoint.
The next major pain point addressed was the global search functionality and help section. After reviewing feedback, testing the search functionality and reviewing the help section, two main issues surfaced:
While a Global search is helpful for users to master complex sites, it was difficult for users to utilize the powerful search functionality unless they knew what they were searching for. Oftentimes, it seemed as though the search was not working properly; however, this perception was because users were unaware of the search's limitations. Working with one of the developers, we suggested a few ways the search could be improved:
Keywords needed to have a balance between exact matches for precision and a broad match for reach. This could be handled by utilizing Levenshtein Distance. Avoid the search showing irrelevant items and keep relevant information on top. Results that have keywords in the title should be ranked higher than results with the term in the content (eg. The library results don’t have the milestone keyword in the title at all, and should not be atop result.)
Autosuggestion of common items would help mitigate poor search queries. Users would have less mental effort or need to guess at what keywords would produce good results. Users would simply have to recognize the right words or phrases they wanted from a suggested list. Auto suggestion would also offer a fallback for mistakes as typing is error prone.
Another common feedback from users was that it was difficult to find help information that was relevant to them. The help centre page was difficult to scan or find ways to get to relevant information fast. There was also concern that as the resource library expanded, the issue would be compounded.
A few updates to the UI of the Help Center were suggested to make it easier to scan and find the information:
Each user type is utilizing the portal in different ways, with different workflows and goals. Changing the FAQs to display based on user roles (Participant, Core Team, Client Consulting Team) ensures that common questions and answers match the concerns of the specific user role.
We also recommended development of a content strategy to manage the existing content and updates, to ensure creators follow specific rules for how help information is written. We encourage the standard to divide content into small, logical pieces that could easily be understood and followed. The layout should follow visual hierarchy rules, adding important keywords for scanning purposes and for improving search relevance.
The recommendations made within the UX audit formed the foundation of the UI updates that were then implemented over a number of weeks to help reduce pain points identified by users, ensure consistency throughout the platform, and optimize performance to ensure smooth and efficient operations.
Involve development upfront. Discussing solutions with the development team beforehand helped me understand technical imitations and informed design strategy, especially regarding the help and search systems.
Innovation isn’t always necessary. Using the foundation established with the initial design system and patterns helped us revise and improve an existing system rather than unnecessarily rebuild it from scratch.